As the home secretary continues to wrestle with the career-threatening problems of what to do about General Pinochet the government will also have to cope this week with the growing surge of media-led Euro-scepticism.

This will be aired in the context of a meeting of European Finance Ministers on Tuesday, the State visit of Germany's President Herzog (how will The Sun celebrate that?) starting on Wednesday and the prime minister's attendance at the Franco-British summit in St Malo on Thursday and Friday.

In the Commons the debates on the Queen's speech will conclude with discussions on Parliament and the Constitution and on the economy.

The vote on Tuesday is expected to confirm Paddy Ashdown's problems by showing the Liberal Democrats, who are working with the government on constitutional affairs, joining the Tories in the division lobbies to vote against a Queen's speech which they criticise as a series of missed opportunities on such issues as Freedom of Information.

Labour and Europe

Fleet Street has been focussing strongly on issues like tax harmonisation, the extension of the 48-hour week and embryonic plans for more co-ordination of justice systems to ring alarm bells about growing federalist tendencies and an assumed threat to the British way of doing things.

Federalist talk from the new German administration, notably foreign minister Joschka Fischer and finance minister Oskar Lafontaine, has intensified this.

Mr Lafontaine, with support from Yves Thibault de Silguy, the European Commissioner for monetary union, and from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French finance minister, has been using the imminent arrival of the first stage of the single currency to press for greater tax harmonisation on the grounds that big variations in tax regimes across Europe could threaten the smooth running of monetary union. EU tax commissioner Mario Monti has been laying plans for harmonisation of VAT.

Chancellor Gordon Brown, while a co-signatory to a recent economic policy document from the European finance ministers and the keenest proponent of a single currency within the Cabinet, has insisted that he will veto any proposal for tax harmonisation. But Mr Lafontaine is adamant that Germany will push for tax harmonisation during its six month EU presidency, beginning in January and there will be pressure for an agreed Socialist parties manifesto for next year's European Parliament elections containing similar thoughts.

It is all highly inconvenient for the British Government, which has been accused of doing too little to sell to the British populace the single currency system it wishes to join so long as it proves itself in the early stages. Mr Blair's strategy has been based on "getting the politics right first", i.e. persuading the British people that Europe is not launched on a helter skelter slide towards an all-embracing federal state before setting out to sell the merits of the single currency.

He had hoped for a better atmosphere with the lifting of the beef ban proving a symbol that a more co-operative approach to Europe than that demonstrated by the last Tory administration does bring results.

The government, with its eyes fixed on a smooth ride to re-election for a second term, has been anxious to maintain good relations with the tabloids and now finds The Sun and The Mail in full Euro-sceptic cry on an almost daily basis. Nor does it feel comfortable having to start shouting about use of the veto when it has insisted that it is maintaining much happier relations with its EU partners than the previous Tory administration.

The government has been looking to enthusiasts among business leaders to make the campaign for a single currency. The business leaders say that while they will be happy to lend support it is for the government to give a political lead.

Mr Blair and his team are clearly alarmed that their voice is going to count for little in Europe so long as Britain stays outside the single currency but are not prepared to take the risk of a referendum on joining before the next election.

As the EU begins to rejig its finances to prepare for enlargement ministers are deeply alarmed about another fight looming: they took the trouble to include a special passage in the Queen's speech and in the background briefings provided with it to say that the Government would fight any attempt to cut or abolish the British "abatement", the Budget rebate worth some £2bn a year won by the then Mrs Thatcher, which effectively returns to Britain about two thirds of the difference between its payments into the EU and its receipts from Brussels.

Queen's speech debate

Parliament generally goes quiet for a few days after the Queen's speech. With no votes until the final day of the five-day debate many MPs take the chance to slip away and concentrate on constituency affairs. But Monday's debate will be watched carefully for any further news of the government's intentions about reform of the House of Lords.

We are still waiting to be told the form of the independent commission Tony Blair is to set up for the selection of life peers, to circumvent the Tory accusation that the prime minister, by removing the hereditary peers before it is decided what to put in their place, will be creating an Upper House of Tony's Cronies ready to do his bidding and rubber stamp the government's programme.

As yet we know neither the chairman nor the membership of the Royal Commission to pronounce on a suitable replacement for the Lords.

At the end of the debate on Tuesday, the Liberal Democrats are now expected to vote with the opposition against the government, despite the announcement of the Blair-Ashdown concordat in the wake of the Jenkins Report on electoral reform committing them to work more closely together in future on a wider range of issues.

Paddy Ashdown has been criticised by a number of MPs and party activists over the deal, as much because of the way it was sprung upon the party as for the idea of extending the practice of "constructive opposition". (The evidence from local government by-elections and the national opinion polls is that constructive opposition is impressing the public as grown-up politics and benefiting the standing of the Lib Dems).

There have been mutterings about his style of leadership and Lib Dem MPs have pushed for a vote against the government on the Queen's Speech both to mark their irritation at being left out of the Blair-Ashdown loop and to assert the party's separate identity.

Mr Ashdown himself criticised the government's Queen's speech programme for timidity and Lib Dems would like to have seen much more on the environment, a Freedom of Information Bill and a more positive attitude towards the single currency.

The Lib Dems will be further angered if the government does not find a way of getting through the European Elections Bill which was five times amended by the Lords in the last session and eventually lost. They stand to benefit from its introduction of a PR system for next June's elections and have swallowed their disappointment with the system of "closed lists" on which the government is insisting in order to see the principle of PR confirmed.

The Bill will be reintroduced and taken through all its Commons stages on Wednesday. How soon it will then be returned to the Lords remains uncertain. If the Tory peers decide to create trouble on it again then other items in the government's programme may be held up. But there remains the inconvenience for the Tories that if they do mobilise their forces in the Lords to strike out closed lists once again then the Government will revert to the First Past the Post system for next year's European Parliament elections. That would not only deprive the Tories of the seats they can be expected to gain under a PR system but would expose Euro rifts again as all the parties had to go through a new selection process for Euro candidates under the old system.